The life and experiences of a community college philosophy teacher, department chair and former debate coach.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Squeaky faculty wheels...

... somehow become my problem.

The thing is, I'm refusing to cooperate.

Prof X is a friend of mine. I like her a lot, but she's kind of scattered. She's also on the far side of campus from the rest of her department. This means that sometimes there are gaps in communication.

Those gaps aren't my problem. The problem is with her colleagues -- when a rotating schedule gets held up on someone's desk, X gets the short end of the stick.

X has complained to others about this -- and they're looking to me to solve the problem.

The thing is, X gets the same e-mails about schedules as all the other faculty members. I've told X that when she gets one of those e-mails, if she'd like me to make a copy of what I gave to the other person, she's going to need to ask for it. The other thing she can do is actually contact the other members of her department to see where it is. Her discipline is the same size as philosophy -- but, somehow we manage...

The thing is -- I have almost a classroom full of faculty members -- if I start giving special accommodations to one faculty member, then I'll end up having to do it for the others... and that isn't going to happen.